


the sadness of strawberry cake

by coeur (orphan_account)



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Exams, F/F, Fluff, Food, Happy Ending, Pining, Shyness, Slice of Life, all-girls school set in the 1950s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 23:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16670683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/coeur
Summary: the finals had that rotten aesthetic about them: tears dripping into teacups, poetry, ink-stained fingers, and - for jiwoo - a soft strawberry heart.





	the sadness of strawberry cake

 

The people in the school sat at desks - those ornamental wooden ones with spry animals carved along the sides. Probably pine wood. They had legs that curled outwards at the base. The chairs were wrought, varnished black iron. One of the classrooms had pastel-coloured streamers hanging from the ceiling, the remnants of someone’s surprise birthday party.

They had to be taken down, frills and all. Detention started at six in the evening and then she’d have to go back home after that, promise to do her homework and scrape through that borrowed book from the library.

Jiwoo dragged the chair behind her, metal screeching over the floor in the floating silence of the classroom.

Summer was mild that year but it burned with no less metaphorical intensity. She stopped in the middle of the classroom with all those fancy tables standing around her, pale and dry of colour in the late-afternoon light.

The cleaning lady was clomping down the corridor outside in her big rubber boots, walking in that slow, languid manner of someone who couldn’t care less. She slipped past the open doorway of the classroom, stopped and took a long, careful look at Jiwoo. 

“Hurry up,” was all she muttered, before leaving.

Jiwoo couldn't bring herself to hate the cleaning lady. She was just slow, in that matronly sort of way. Kind of strict too, and had one of those pudding faces that was plain and expressionless.

She ate lunch out of a blue ceramic bowl that was broken and mended in several places, dumping sauce on top of her rice, never touching the sweet drinks - all these little habits that Jiwoo watched while hanging around her. She soon grew to realise that it was a lonely, awkward life that the lady led.

 

Detention was a daily thing for Jiwoo – cleaning classrooms and all that. Just the classrooms. She liked to take time to read the chalk writing on the board of each classroom she visited before wiping it off with the wet rag. Some of the teachers had real pretty cursive handwriting that she adored, decorating the board like a work of art.

Jiwoo climbed onto the chair, one foot at a time. The streamers hung in loops and shreds above her head, gauzy in the breeze. She looked up and brought her second foot onto the seat, still grabbing the backrest. When she’d stopped her legs from wobbling enough to finally straighten up, she reached out and took the garland of streamers in both hands. The ceiling was low enough for her to touch it while standing on the chair.

Jiwoo turned back to stare at the empty doorway, at the plain white wall of the corridor outside.

She tugged on the crepe paper tenuously, feeling the fragile material. She held onto to the twisted cords of streamers with both hands for a while, looking through the loop at the arched classroom window that stood beyond. The chair creaked when she shifted her weight.

And who, she thought, would think of putting brocade curtains on the rods when the windows beyond them were barred? The less there was to see, the better.

She leaned forward, touching her chin to the paper. The paper tickled skin, ran a shiver down her back. She realised her hands were shaking.

Then, with a startling rush of urgency, she tore the crepe away from the ceiling. Her moment was gone.

The mess grew under her feet in pieces. She stepped down, pressing her hands against the folds of her skirt. The black gloss of her Mary Janes stood out like ink blots on the floor. She moved away, staring at the mess for a few moments, then went outside to get a broom.

The cleaning lady - she never knew her name - called her a strawberry.

“Strawberries are soft. They’re squashed easily, just like you.” The lady soaked the cloth in a wash bucket and squeezed it out with chubby hands. “So easily bruised.”

She had this sudden thought while she was sweeping the floor, about how detention was just a perfunctory clean-up of everyone else’s wedding confetti, someone else’s birthday pinata ruins, all the smashed wine bottles after a party. Picking and collecting whatever had been left behind in the post-mortem of lessons with girls who chewed on pencils, wrote furiously on books and tucked strands of hair behind their ears while the teachers scratched meaning onto the horizontal surfaces in front.

All that clean-up was some sort of aftermath control, for glacial beauties and special snowflakes. She tried to see it in different ways, sort the reasons out by purpose and experience and even considered the tragic aesthetic of being treated like a second-hand Cinderella in a black Victorian-collared dress.

And Jiwoo liked best to think of it in this way - if she could finish all her tasks, maybe her friend would finally be proud of her.

 

Sooyoung gave her the hair dye one day when they were studying. Jiwoo was scratching a dried nib across the crumpled surface of her writing paper, playing with lines and scribbles. 

Sooyoung had a hand-knitted bag, one of those kinds that was made from yarn. She took a bottle out of it, sliding it slowly across the table to where Jiwoo was.

“I think a new colour would look nice on you.”

Jiwoo blinked at her, touched the bottle with a finger, then turned it around to read the label.

Sooyoung laughed.

“I use this brand, don’t worry.”

Jiwoo touched her head. “What’s wrong with this colour?”

“I don’t know," Sooyoung said, leaning back in her chair. "This brown’s kinda dull, I guess.”

Jiwoo ran her fingers through her ponytail, pulled it forward to inspect the colour in the sunlight streaming in from the classroom window. Sooyoung had a classy way of doing it when she checked for split ends - that effortless flip, prodding with fingertips, and tossing it back over her shoulder.

“So you want it like, more chestnut red.”

“A little brighter. You don’t have to do it, of course. I’m just saying.” Sooyoung waved a hand dismissively. “I had an extra bottle from the last time.”

“Actually, I think black hair suits you just fine.”

Sooyoung jabbed her in the elbow with the back of her pencil, grinning.

“Then you do this for me, okay?”

 

Jiwoo sat in front of the sink that night, combing and rubbing the colour out, destroying an old hairbrush in the process. It was red-brown, more brown than red, that kind of thing that made her look a little different, almost like a girl from a children’s picture book. She laughed at her reflection in the mirror; all the copper-red slop on her hair that was slippery and shiny in the horrible lighting of the bathroom.

She washed her hands in the sink after she was done, still waiting for it to dry out, and watched the brownish swirls going down the drain hole.

Sooyoung was really happy about it. That look of pure, unbridled joy brought some sort of dewy aura to Jiwoo’s day, even while she was scrubbing the blackboard at detention on the same evening.

The cleaning lady was amused.

“You’ve turned yourself into a real strawberry now, my dear girl.”

She dumped the detergent into the washbucket, shaking the squeeze bottle out.

“Look at you," she said, watching Jiwoo struggling with the broom. "Didn’t your mother ever make you do housework at home?”

Jiwoo touched her free hand to the wisps at the side of her head.

“Does it look nice?”

The cleaning lady winced as she sat down on the upturned bucket, sorting out the scrubbing sponges.

She looked up.

“It’s alright.”

 

It was the same funny, chestnut-coloured tea that Sooyoung carried on a tray to their table during lunch in the dining hall. They were studying, and Jiwoo was losing focus again. She was re-reading the same set of sentences she’d been stumbling on for the past fifteen minutes.

The rectilinear lunch hall was almost empty, dim and glowing with the sun of late afternoon. They had a window seat, and splices of light reflected from the glass cut sharp points of white on their sheets of notes.

Sooyoung set the tray down on the table and slid it to the side. The tea rippled and wobbled inside the mug when she placed it next to Jiwoo’s stack of books.

Jiwoo watched as she put sugar cubes into the tea, pinching each one with delicate fingers and dropping them in. She put a spoon into each teacup and stirred the tea around for a while, smoke rising, then left it to cool.

The process was quick and methodical; almost elegant.

Jiwoo stared at the mug, then at Sooyoung, who was sliding back into her chair.

“Tea again?" 

Sooyoung smiled, all pretty teeth against the matte cherry of her lipstick. Jiwoo returned the smile.

“This one’s quite refreshing,” Sooyoung said.

“Uh-" Jiwoo tapped the handle of the mug. "Apple and cinnamon.”

Sooyoung leaned forward, contemplating the dissolving sugar cubes. She lifted the spoon and poked at the ones floating around in her mug.

Jiwoo stared at the frills on her blouse, at the nice-looking black ribbon knotted at the throat, the ends brushing against the table.

“It’s more apple than cinnamon, but it tastes good all the same.”

“Yeah.”

Jiwoo folded a corner of her notepaper down, running through the list of sub-headings she’d written out. Sooyoung liked tea, and she kept this little fact somewhere at the back of her mind, along with the title of her favourite book.

 

The study sessions extended into hours. There was a schedule for them to follow, a set of papers to practice for every category of essay question that could be asked. 

The ornate benches in the library were filled with students still rushing papers for submissions, bottles of ink strewn all over the tables. Those girls in the corridors lingered like ghosts – all limp hair and slow gaits, pushing pieces of paper into the leaves of their dictionaries and thick formula booklets. They seemed to be doing the same thing all the time, nearly tripping while they were making their way to the library. They brushed past people like apparitions, hell-bent on doing one thing, and doing it well for the rest of the week.

Sooyoung was annotating her own essays, tired and making slow progress but doing it in a way that was exceedingly composed and mellow. She could keep her handwriting focused and unchanged throughout long marathons of text walls. The teachers praised her for consistency and the neat, tasteful way in which she put prose to paper. She was an auteur of poise.

The tea in Jiwoo’s cup had been drained completely. A brown stain clung to the rim where she drank from, and the spoon stuck to the undissolved sugar clumping at the bottom.

Jiwoo put her pen down in the middle of a paragraph and rested her head on her arm, flattening her palm against the table. She closed her eyes, and she could see the words smudging into each other in the foggy afterimage of memory.

Sooyoung tapped her shoulder.

“Are you alright?”

Jiwoo opened one eye, turned her head slightly so she was facing Sooyoung.

“Mm-hm.”

Sooyoung pushed the cups to the side, motioned for Jiwoo to hand her papers over. They were the ruled loose-leaf kind, streaked with red and dog-eared.

Jiwoo closed her eyes again, listened to the rustling of papers and the distant echoing sounds of footfalls and clinking porcelain in the hall.

“You didn’t do so well for this one,” Sooyoung said, turning it over.

Jiwoo sighed, sat up slowly and tried to rub the numbness in her arm away. She’d crumpled the entire left sleeve of her dress.

She didn’t want to meet Sooyoung’s gaze.

Jiwoo was becoming aware of her own shaky breathing, laced with the fuzzy scented air of the lunch hall. Sooyoung was a nice girl who wouldn’t dare to say it for her.

She swallowed, feeling sudden hot pain in the back of her throat.

“I failed.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Sooyoung said placidly, putting it down. She took the battered library copy of the set text from Jiwoo’s side of the table and thumbed through the mildewed pages.

Jiwoo peered at her curiously. “Then, how about you?”

Sooyoung didn’t look up for a while.

“Jiwoo-ah," she tapped on the test paper. "You should be worrying about this.”

“I know, I know.”

“So – what’s the problem you’re facing?”

“I have a lot of problems.”

“Something specific to this.” Sooyoung pointed her pencil at the work Jiwoo was writing.

“I’ve been trying to… do my essays,” Jiwoo said, tracing her finger on the cardstock cover of her notebook, “– but I just can’t finish them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m able to get the introduction done, and maybe two body paragraphs, and then it just … stops there.”

“So you’ve got a problem with finishing things.”

“Maybe.” Jiwoo shrugged. “And I can’t finish them during the exams as well.”

“Is it your motivation?”

“I ... guess.”

“That’s quite important.”

Sooyoung closed the book and delicately slid it back across the table.

Jiwoo shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I can’t think fast enough.”

“Then you’ve got to train yourself.” Sooyoung tinkered with the tea mug, pushing the spoon around inside. “And you really need to start completing the practice essays.”

Jiwoo hung her head.

“It’s just," she exhaled heavily, "- so _hard_.”

“I know it is.” Sooyoung touched her wrist. “It’s hard for me too, for all of us.”

Jiwoo was looking at the words scrawled in her notebook, hating them and feeling the shame of admitting it. She didn’t move her hand, liked the feel of solid fingers tethering her to some semblance of reality.

They had to remember that. That the world existed and ran on outside the school. Sometimes people got too excited to go out there, got too sick of seeing things from behind glass cases, so they escaped through the wide French windows on the higher floors.

After that, the welfare committee started nailing metal bars behind the brocade curtains. 

Only the older students were around then, and they knew, and they told the younger ones who were left to decide for themselves the truth in those stories.

Jiwoo had tried not to lie to her, even when Sooyoung asked her - straight up - if she’d ever harboured such thoughts. She had. She thought about it, a few times. They sat in the classroom that whole afternoon, willing the time to run away from them, run away from them, even.

“I’m going to help you,” Sooyoung said, sweetly earnest in her efforts. The recall melted away, and Jiwoo felt that sickening sense of dread - the dread of reality - returning. “In fact, I want to help you. But you need to put in effort too.”

 

That had to start with cutting down on her time spent in detention, so they could study in the library, or an empty classroom before lessons started. 

“I’m going to need you to start coming earlier,” Sooyoung said, talking to her in the gilded mirror of the bathroom. The dim light cast them both in translucent shadows, hauntings of their forms in refractions. There was nobody else inside.

Jiwoo had gone in and broken down before the sink, watching her eye makeup run dirty streaks down her face. Her name had been a permanent fixture on the detention list for late coming, and the exams were a month away.

Jiwoo sniffed, watched the mirror as Sooyoung pushed her wispy bangs back with careful fingers and dabbed at the mess on her face with a handkerchief.

“You can try doing that, hm?”

The washroom was a cavernous, unfriendly thing, dim and dark with polished granite walls and cold tiles. People could come inside to be alone, and to feel lonely.

Jiwoo wiped her face with the lace cuff of her sleeve until it was all rumpled and stained with black, then looked up at the ceiling to take deep breaths, focused on the point of light coming in from above.

There was a round circle of stained glass fitted in the high window that cast a grimy blue ethereal stain on the walls and floor. It used to be done up in rococo, like the rest of the school, but all those years had worn the pastel down to a deep grey.

Jiwoo tried to blink her tears away. Her nose was still blocked, a little red. She sniffed again.

“Okay,” she whispered, and then she felt the tear running down, tickling her cheek. She quickly caught it with a finger. “I’ll try.”

Sooyoung had been smiling at her throughout, benign and unwavering. She pushed the folded damp handkerchief into Jiwoo’s loosely clenched palm, then closed her own hand around Jiwoo’s fingers, a tacit reassurance. _I am here. I’m still here._

They met each other’s eyes in the mirror for a moment, but then Jiwoo quickly stared down at the elaborate gold detailing of the tap knobs, suddenly shy and afraid.

 

Apple tea accompanied them for the next month – whether it was a morning or evening study session. Sometimes they added more sugar, sometimes none, but the soured tangy taste remained.

“It’ll help you stay awake,” Sooyoung offered, stirring the sugar in. “Just give yourself a break whenever you need to.”

They left the tea to cool after that. Jiwoo watched the steam rise and curl into the air – lazily made, yet so wonderfully detailed.

 

“Do you have a copy of the syllabus?”

Jiwoo stared at Sooyoung blankly.

“You’ve got to understand what it’s all about. What you’re studying for. It’d be good to have a copy on hand for your own reference.”

“I’ll have to get it from the office.”

“That’s funny, I thought they distributed it to everyone in class.”

Jiwoo looked down. “I kinda … lost mine.”

“Well,” Sooyoung said, trying to laugh. “No wonder.”

“I’ll – I’ll get it tomorrow.”

“Do that.” She nodded. “And bring all your previous essays as well.”

 

“So you’ve failed nearly all the assignments, except for three of them.” Sooyoung was flipping through Jiwoo’s binder. “That’s something." 

“Come on, you’ve probably never failed a test in your life.”

“I did, actually.” Sooyoung turned a page. “Once, for a calculus test. I’m no good at it.”

Jiwoo exhaled heavily. “Calculus?”

"You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’ve only got a month left.” Jiwoo shook her head.

“ _Don’t_ keep saying that,” Sooyoung chided. “Not everyone who comes in here manages to walk out in one piece, did you know that?”

Jiwoo was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was almost flat; passive.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

Sooyoung took a fresh sheet of paper out of her binder. “I felt it would be good for you to know that.” 

"I know that already."

Sooyoung shook her head. “Time. That’s what you need to dedicate. That’s what resolves. That’s what all those people didn’t give.”

 

Sooyoung stayed with her throughout, and they read through chapters, poems, with long lists of aphorisms to counter their discussions. 

Jiwoo kept the lists of quotations that Sooyoung had written for her – nice ones that served to encourage and remind her of where it would end, and another functional one with the pieces of evidence she had to remember for her timed paper.

“Do you want me to teach you cursive?” Sooyoung asked her one day, watching Jiwoo struggling with her uneven ink splotches and dark blue-stained fingertips.

It was evening.

“You still write like a child,” she added, smiling.

"I'm - working on it."

"Looks like the kind of writing that's fresh with the imprint of a mother's guiding hand around yours, or something."

Jiwoo took a piece of Sooyoung’s work and tried to imitate the loops and swirls, but everything came out lumpy and awkward, all shivering lines done with an unsure hand.

“I give up,” she said, laughing all thin and shaky. The smiled waned on Sooyoung's face.

“You’re tired.”

Jiwoo slowly scraped her chair back, stood up to stretch her legs.

“No.”

Sooyoung laughed, all light and airy.

“I’ll teach you after exams, okay?”

“Sure,” Jiwoo said, feeling her eyes burn from fatigue. She wondered if Sooyoung was tired herself.

But Sooyoung pushed the mug of cold tea towards her.

“Take this.”

She did, getting the bittersweet sting on her tongue. After that, they went back to self-timed assignments.

 

Jiwoo could feel it, though, that slow improvement of her impervious attitude to the practices. It was a numbing process, but over time she became less distracted by what was happening, and began to immerse herself within those words and those pages, understanding, even sometimes forgetting that Sooyoung was sitting directly opposite her.

And sometimes either Sooyoung or Jiwoo would look up quietly while the other one was focused on writing or reading, and they would pause for a few seconds, watching, then go back to their own work.

It was secretive, almost bashful, like they were afraid to be caught by the other for doing it.

Jiwoo sometimes borrowed Sooyoung’s stationery for a few days – a pen or a pencil – and this she would use to write her essays, and imagine that Sooyoung was sitting next to her while she put word after word down on the paper.

That was her quiet answer to listlessness: only time could change such things.

 

On the last day of preparation, they’d both crammed themselves into a small, dusty little corner of the library, poring over the poetry book set text.

Jiwoo gave her the call number, written on a little scrap of torn notebook paper. Their fingers touched when she passed the folded piece over.

" _Incessant tidings from childhood gods_ , that's the title."

It was a light-brown canvas hardcover, the spine peeling and pages wrinkled. Jiwoo listened to Sooyoung’s breathy little whispers as she read the poems out - didactic and focused, treasuring every sentence.

“I really liked this one,” Sooyoung said, flipping to a section she’d marked out with her finger. “It’s by A.E. Houseman. In 1896.”

“Read it to me,” Jiwoo said, and she closed her eyes.

It was a pretty-sounding thing, two stanzas and oddly lyrical. When Sooyoung was finished, Jiwoo stared at her with curious eyes, their elbows almost touching on the tiny wooden bench. She noticed that Sooyoung was wearing tiny stud earrings that day, little faux diamonds.

“This is a sad one.”

Sooyoung ran her thumb along the border of the page.

“See,” she said, softly. “We won’t be those rosy-cheeked girls forever.”

 

On the morning of the exam, Sooyoung and Jiwoo swapped pencil boxes. They would go into the hall, just like how it had been during their practice sessions, and imagine that the other one was sitting next to her.

“Good luck, Jiwoo-ah,” Sooyoung said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Then she backed away, still smiling, and left. Her exam venue was the one next to Jiwoo’s.

The students were trickling into the hall, leaving shadows behind them as the high ceiling lights came on. The desks were small islands of repose in the open hall – wide and imposing like the foyer of a cathedral, and each girl sat down, perfectly alone before the unflinching exam paper.

Jiwoo held the box in her hand, and she kept it close throughout, even when she slid onto the chair in front of her table marked with a number card, laid with an ink blotter and sheets of writing paper.

She tasted a ghosting of tea on her dry lips – that familiar apple taste – once, during the exam.

That's just what it said. _I’m still here._

 

Jiwoo found Sooyoung by the courtyard that same afternoon – around five-thirty, just after the exam, with rows of girls in monochrome dresses filing out of the hall with blotched fingernails and glazed eyes. They drifted out to the courtyard, seeing the warming sun and yellow grass.

Sooyoung was standing next to the conservatory with her bag and a brown paper carrier.

In the afternoon light Sooyoung had the charisma of an angel, intoxicating in that refined, artistic way. She was a marble statue on a pedestal, with perfect features and a golden heart. Jiwoo thought, and then understood perfectly, the line from The Iliad at that moment, the same thing she had glossed over during the paper, the line about the terrible eyes shining, hidden deep in the recesses of browned book pages whittled down by years of frantic fingers turning them.

It was frighteningly beautiful, and she didn’t want to let the moment pass. A nervous smile began to pull at the corners of her lips.

Jiwoo clutched her books to her chest, trying to hold her own pounding heart down, exhilarated with excitement and shaking with awe as she closed the distance between them.

“You’re pretty happy today,” Sooyoung observed, leaning back against the wall of the conservatory.

The flowers within held muted colours as a backdrop behind the white frames, painted with sunlight beyond the window panes.

“I think I’ll pass, for once,” Jiwoo heard herself say.

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

Sooyoung reached out, pulled her into a gentle hug - this light, tenacious thing that was perfumed with lavender and left a wistful yearning in its aftermath.

“I’m happy for you, Jiwoo-ah.” Sooyoung suddenly looked like she was going to cry. “I really, really am.”

Jiwoo pressed her lips together, counting the seconds to prevent her smile from showing too much teeth. She squeezed her eyes shut, nodded enthusiastically, then opened them.

“Oh,” Sooyoung reached into the paper carrier she was holding. “I had something for you.”

She handed it over, a clear plastic box package with a piece of cake inside.

It was a strawberry cake.

“You tried your best.” Sooyoung broke into a wide grin. “I’m sorry it’s one of those cheap little convenience store brands. I didn’t have much time after my paper ended.”

Jiwoo held it with two hands. At that moment it was a delicate little thing, still fresh with the novelty of surprise, and she didn’t know what to do with it.

“Thank you,” she rushed, feeling pleasantly giddy.

“You’re going back?”

Jiwoo looked down at the cake, then up at Sooyoung.

Sooyoung pushed her arm. “I’ll walk with you to bus stop, then.”

Jiwoo was still smiling stupidly, holding the cake and looking at it as they left.

The early blush of sunset in the sky trekked down across the courtyard when they walked through the gate. She knew what Sooyoung had always said about those red skies and rain, and the old proverb they passed around about sailors preparing for bad times ahead.

Red skies on an exam day could mean anything. 

Her own strawberry heart, so endearingly appeased by the cleaning lady’s moniker, ached with feather-light pain, and told her that she was there, that she had already earned her own meaning, already was a fixture in the enshrined thoughts of a beautiful person - you’re right here, you’ve got a home in this cold, clinical world.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [cake](https://mysteery.tumblr.com/post/163182890464) . [repose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70sdKUA2r60) . [a.e. houseman's aching](https://www.bartleby.com/123/54.html) . [fashion](https://www.instagram.com/p/BoCjKqqgC4P/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet)
> 
> also inspired by tsh, the classics clique n the heart attack mv


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